Enough is enough: Biden urges end to US gun violence

US President Joe Biden called on lawmakers to collaborate to end gun violence during a visit Thursday to New York where recent shootings of police have highlighted a growing fear of violent disorder in American cities.

The Democrat waded into the politically treacherous issue of crime and guns as he tries to fight perceptions that he has failed to do enough to combat a soaring crime wave.

"Enough is enough," Biden -- flanked by New York City Mayor and ex-cop Eric Adams -- told police officers, politicians and press during a meeting at the NYPD headquarters in Manhattan.

"Because we know we can do things about this, but for the resistance, we're getting from some sectors of the government and the Congress and the state legislatures and organisational structures out there," he added.

Biden travelled with Attorney General Merrick Garland and said he and the top Justice Department official had put together a comprehensive strategy to combat gun crime in major US cities.

"First, we want to crack down on the flow of firearms used to commit violence. That includes taking on and shutting down rogue gun dealers," the president said.

He explained that his Justice Department was launching a "national ghost gun enforcement initiative" to tackle untraceable weapons.

"If you commit a crime in the ghost gun, not only are state and local prosecutors going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well," he warned.

The moving sight on Wednesday and last week of thousands of New York police officers massing in Manhattan to honour two fellow officers killed while answering a domestic call in January underlined the pressure Biden is facing.

Six officers in the Big Apple have been shot just this year, and they're among the nearly three dozen shot across the country in January, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Major crimes in the city are up 38% this year so far, reflecting spikes in most major urban areas. A January study by the Council on Criminal Justice showed homicides in 22 cities increasing five% in 2021 over 2020 -- and a whopping 44% over 2019.

And whether it's carjackings around Washington, DC, or smash-and-grab raids on San Francisco department stores, news bulletins paint a grim picture of a country struggling to regain its footing in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The crime wave, which still leaves US cities generally far safer than in the 1980s and '90s, has been connected by experts to a combination of social disruption linked to the pandemic and fallout for police departments in the aftermath of a spate of botched arrests in which Black people were killed or badly injured.

But Biden is increasingly taking the blame. According to an ABC/Ipsos poll released last week, 69% of Americans disapprove of Biden's policies on gun violence and 64% his handling of crime.

"Our cities are war zones, our country is in turmoil and police officers are being hunted in the streets. Where are you, Mr President?" the Fraternal Order of Police's national vice president, Joe Gamaldi, said on Fox News last week.

Treading the line

Biden is under pressure not just from the right, which labels him as weak on crime, but also the left, which wants reform -- and even dismantling -- of police departments.

Republicans hoping to get control of Congress in November midterm elections see blaming Biden and the "defund the police" wing of the Democrats as a winning message. Teaming up with Adams gives Biden a chance to show he can tread the line between his leftist supporters and right-wing critics.

Biden indicated that he was trying to balance strong law enforcement with the kind of reforms demanded by the Black Lives Matter movement.

"The answer is not to defund the police," he said. "It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding, to be partners, to be protectors.

He added that the answer was also about providing "additional services" to communities to tackle root causes of crime.

"We need more social workers, meaning more mental health workers," Biden said.

It's the kind of centrist approach that Adams himself is modeling.

He took office in January after winning election on a platform that included tougher policing tactics, such as redeploying a disbanded undercover unit.

Yet as an African-American Democrat with a growing national profile, he has plenty of political capital in the bank -- and seems happy to share some with Biden,

Biden picked New York for his speech, a senior US official said, because it has seen "a spike in gun violence," but also because it's somewhere that "has successfully deployed many strategies like those the president supports."